Enshitification and walled gardens
Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
Honestly, this sounds like the optimistic take, to me. Platforms are too all-encompassing and multi-faced. We are too tightly enclosed into these walled gardens.
Complacency from the users? Late-stage capitalism favouring buyouts of smaller companies and huge monopolies? Microsoft's "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" being way too good of a business idea for other mega-corporations to not adopt themselves? Governments liking more and more the surveillance? Longevity, ubiquity and diversification of FAGAM - Facebok, Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft?
Tiktok might actually die, eventually, it's a quite new service, maybe it's burning bright, but it can burn fast. But not Google, which has stood the test of time and is everywhere in the software (Chrome, Chromium), services (Gmail, Youtube) and the OS of cell phones (Android). Google is not going anywhere. Facebook might be snubbed by the younger generation (I wouldn't know), but Instagram, Messenger and Whatsapp stand strong. Even Twitter might survive the new, special brand of enshittification brought by its new owner.
Platforms died in the 2000's, where our collective bullshit threshold as users was way lower. But now that governments, banks, universities, employers, etc, push people into using services of private mega-corporations, and most people's digital life is tightly weaved with the Big Tech, platforms won't just die.
(hashtag, positive thoughts)